17 SEPTEMBER 1977, Page 15

The Journey

Sir: Editorial excisions, due to unforeseeable last-minute production difficulties which have since been explained to me, of a sizeable part of my review of Cecilia Sternberg's The Journey had a regrettably distorting effect upon it, jettisoning inter alio all commendatory references either to the extravagant generosity of the Sternbergs before exile or to their courageous and exemplarily aristocrntic adaptability thereafter, when the Countess went to work in the United States as a ceramic artist and her husband helped mind the store. My samples of careless editing and indexing also had to be cut.

Alastair Forbes Peaklet Cottage, Fide, Sussex